ABOUT
THE PROJECT
The answer, as anyone seized with the near-universal experience of philosophical wonder can attest, is that unlike the language typically used to frame these questions, the core experience behind them is anything but big or grand. In its unvarnished form, it has the feel of a personal challenge rather than intellectual deficit, and it awakens more than it humbles or inspires awe.
In sharp contrast to other intellectual endeavors, it is the actual personal process that is important in philosophical engagement rather than compliance with established disciplines or a pursuit of desired ends. Grappling with existential blurs and muddles is a world apart from solving (or contending with) complex mathematical theorems or probing the foundations of physical reality. Far from a lofty intellectual activity or a significant practical expertise reserved for a select few, it is a basic cognitive disposition of our species – almost a natural faculty we all have.
Hence, a more direct, raw perspective on the “gut” of philosophical contemplation – a feel of what it is and how it’s really like – is all but superfluous. Real-time, unprocessed and transparent sweating in the metaphysical basement (hence – my kitchen) is the proper way to generate genuine philosophical light, rather than consuming furnished philosophical dishes served with fake jargon and acumen at the upper floor.
Their Big Questions are your intimate experiences
Spare us the Dons and their Popularizers
Frankly, I am very frustrated with the way virtual platforms present philosophy, which I think actually undermines the immense benefits people could draw from their innate philosophical nature.
Since I embarked on my philosophical journey many years ago, I’ve come to see that its deeply individual nature makes it a formidable force for personal growth and a driver of positive social dynamics. Unlike scientific discovery, which deals with the universal (with comprehensive aspects of an essential totality), philosophical reflection, which exposes the limits of human knowledge and the hubris of our exceptionality as a species, concerns us directly as agents in that totality, addressing our identity as subjects of being. Hence, while science illuminates the world around us and augments our ability to adapt and innovate, philosophy is a vessel of subjective growth. Not ‘personal growth’ in the modern-progressive (echoing the ancient-spiritual) sense of the term. A form of growth that is neither a matter of psychological maturity nor the effect of doctrine or structured development, but of intimate, bold engagement with existential wonder, which alone empowers the human individual to confront the weight of existence as an equal. To face an objective world not as a matter of setting, but as a matter of mindset.
For that to be possible, philosophy must be nurtured and communicated in its genuine form: not as a body of thought or knowledge, but as a living practice: a revival of a withered human ability.
I seek to return philosophy to its Socratic roots, before the original Ἀκαδημία and all its later reincarnations transformed it into a pseudo-science. I believe that while scientific rigor is impossible without a particular drive and acumen, every human being is disposed to resonate the philosophical practices (rather than writings or lectures) of Descartes, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Heidegger or more recent thinkers (when they do what they later discuss in podcasts).
The academic model that underpins most online philosophy today unfortunately obscures and undermines that purpose. However eloquent and knowledgeable, the numerous podcasts and web channels dedicated to philosophy miss the very essence of philosophical communication. The reason is that they all discuss philosophical themes and questions rather than take on – share – philosophical practice, whereby they inadvertently bypass the core of their subject. Explaining philosophy is akin to teaching an infant to speak in a classroom setting instead of live interaction. In this domain, expertise and scholastic authority are not merely ineffective; they represent a fundamental error.
It is, of course, far simpler to discuss one’s intellectual pursuits or elaborate on established disciplinary structures than to lay bare the inner workings of one’s thought process. It is even more suitable and effective in the case of a scholar or a scientist whose subjects of inquiry are conceptually distinct from the pursuit itself. But where the object of inquiry and the inquirer are, in fact, one and the same (e.g., the holistic “environment” of mind & world), this isn’t a genuine option. We cannot other than share that holistic environment even when we act as distinct perspectives (perform as interlocuters). We can talk about what we observe or think, but our responses to the fact of existence (and what is philosophical wonder other than that? – a response to the fact that something is the way it is rather than to the ways things are) can only be shared. “Meta”-responses can only be exchanged in natura.
The repercussions of that communicative misapplication extend far beyond those who dabble in philosophy; they are felt by society as a whole. I humbly offer a remedy to that collective delusion about the prevailing philosophical discourse.
The Emperor's New Clothes
(the folktale)
One may justly ask whether books or articles that address philosophical questions, or conferences where philosophers share their work, are not doing exactly that, namely articulating philosophical dilemmas and elaborating on the nuts and bolts of the ways to address them in the context of past and present alternatives? Is it not the same as the ‘sharing’ I offer in my PhiloKitchen?
No, it isn’t. While formal philosophical texts and debates stand apart from the rising tide of podcast content, the alternative I offer is equally valid when measured against either.
There are compelling reasons why my Kitchen is particularly vital amid the deluge of philosophical discourse in print and elsewhere. The primary reason should become clear as you explore the reflections on this website, for it hinges on experiential triggers to effect a shift in the paradigm, not the other way around. The didactic reason is more subtle and elusive, and I’ll briefly outline it here.
So why labor in the PhiloKitchen rather than study philosophical texts? Simply put, you cannot teach me anything that you do not know yourself; all we can do is confront our ignorance together. In philosophy, that truism is far less trivial than it seems. Allow me to explain (this introduction is not philosophical engagement, so I’ll happily indulge in a bit of erudite aura😊).
Scholarly works are estranged from their readers by design. Not because they are complex or abstruse, but because they serve as the voice of knowledge to the uninitiated. This is not a sign of failure, but rather a sound, natural reality. In science, again, it could not have been otherwise. There is hardly a more significant evolutionary leap than between those who ‘know’ and those who don’t, whereby accumulated knowledge and education at large are humanity’s exceptional bridge over that divide.
But where the very thought process – the entire intellectual project – is driven by a sturdy foundational enigma, without the means to lay an axiomatic basis for the inquiries that continue to unfold, any such estrangement has nothing to rest on, whereby any discourse grounded therein is fundamentally flawed (e.g., the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness; have you noticed how often the following admission emerges, even as people are striving to resolve it: ‘not only are we unable to explain what we wish to, but we are also bereft of the means to even start?’). Hence, even in its most rigorous and elaborate form, the so-called explication of philosophical puzzles fails to serve as a voice of knowledge to the uninitiated.
Take the word ‘think’ as an example. In any other discipline there is a concrete distance between applying that term and the capacity to substantiate the assertion (namely, ‘I think x because y..‘). Only in philosophy, and particularly in the Theory of Mind, this isn’t the case. In point of fact, in all other instances, the thought process is conceptually distinct from its object, making it applicable to the latter. Only in philosophical discourse, with the Theory of Mind at its pinnacle, they are one and the same, whereby the above proposition takes the form of: ‘I think that thinking or the grounds for thinking or the ultimate nature of thinking is y‘, which is not even a tautology, but merely a non-statement.
That is why no one can truly teach or learn philosophy; one can only grapple with one’s own philosophical wounds. The wounds are permanent and defy the advance of academic stature. The healing is of a completely different order.
The differences between the various forms of ‘to think‘, e.g., doubting, questioning, contesting, reflecting, analyzing, inferring, arguing, asserting, stating and so on, are plain manifestations of that word, namely various human dispositions towards the world, rather than reasons or grounds to think in certain ways. They cannot therefore be invoked to explicate ‘thinking’ as such. I can explain why I contest your theory or your opinion on a particular matter, but not why I contest per se (why I am able to contest in the proper context) or how the fact that I do so differs from the fact that I agree with you or reflect upon your views in other cases, since ‘explaining’ initially rests on all those forms of ‘to think’. If I nevertheless try to probe any of them deeper, nothing other than different practical contexts presents itself as a coherent reason for my different responses (“mental” states/process etc.,). But that is not an answer to the question concerning the differences between them or what they are in themselves or what it is about me (a theory of mind, remember?) which accounts for them being the case, which leaves us where we started, namely without even a beginning of an explanation. In the face of such a fundamental impasse, how can any philosophical didactic explication, which all philosophical oral or written texts claim to be, account for its purported subject matter, namely amount to a genuine didactic platform?
I contend it cannot. Nay, I “see” that it cannot as a matter of logic and conceptual transparency. As much as I owe to Wittgenstein, however, I refrain from “throwing away the ladder”, and so I resort to the original Socratic tradition of embracing the practice rather than constructing theories, with the singular practical difference being the venue: my own mind, rather than the public square. I make no claim as to the quality of my contemplations, only that they are genuinely philosophical.
Beyond these heartfelt reasons, there are more grounded motivations for this website.
Notwithstanding the venerable institution of peer review, one cannot really contest any of those scholarly works. The screen of authority, as any student with a profound philosophical calling will tell you, is inherently inclined to dismiss inconvenient or intimidating feedback. The spirit of scientific progress through refutation and revision is alien to the philosophical establishment and the custodians of academic press.
The mounting scale of online instructive discourse, both scholarly and informal, is also an important factor. A book or an article at least offers the quiet and focus required to process complex information and absorb rigorous content. The interactive nature of the virtual domain, however, has resulted in an overwhelming cacophony of self-proclaimed commentators and mediating interlocutors, devastating the subtle contours of philosophical communication to the point of total chaos. Free from any pretense of instruction or interpretation, and unburdened by the constraints of any philosophical creed, I present my philosophical kitchen as a radical alternative. I plainly invite you to philosophize with me with no background noise. We’ll get deeper, I promise.
So…
My goal for this website is to dismantle the disciplinary facade of philosophy and unleash its true potential as a transformative human faculty. I hope to achieve that goal by sharing with you my real-time contemplations, which are offered here in their original, unedited form. Being the raw, unfiltered record of my struggles with the intense, bewildering deadlocks of a genuine philosophical passion, they surely lack the eloquence of other, more polished, philosophical expositions. But this is the heart of their transformative power. The will to look into the bull’s-eye of the enigma is the only appropriate starting point. I invite you to think with me through these baffling questions, to feel the impulse behind them, to linger with me when I pause or exhaust my mental powers and help me in your own thoughts as I stammer or struggle for words; to look sideways even as everything points ahead, and above all, to rediscover the long-lost urge to persevere with the difficulty and not to forsake the enigma, even as a path forward seems to vanish.
We will not resolve any ultimate mysteries. We will certainly emerge victorious.
Welcome, friend. I am so happy to have you here.